The 1991 uprisings in Iraq were a series of anti-governmental intifada rebellions in southern and northern Iraq during the aftermath of the Gulf War. The revolt was fueled by the perception that the power of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was vulnerable at the time; as well as by heavily fueled anger at government repression and the devastation wrought by two wars in a decade, the Gulf War and the Iran–Iraq War. United States also had a role in instigating the uprisings, which were then controversially not aided by the U.S. forces present on Iraqi soil.

Although they presented a very serious threat to the Iraqi Ba'ath Party regime, Saddam managed to suppress the rebellions with massive and indiscriminate force and maintained power. They were ruthlessly crushed by the loyalist forces spearheaded by the Iraqi Republican Guard and the population was successfully terrorized. During the few weeks of unrest tens of thousands of people were killed. Many more died during the following months, while nearly two million Iraqis fled for their lives. In the aftermath, the government intensified the forced relocating of Marsh Arabs and the draining of the Iraqi marshlands, while the Allies established the Iraqi no-fly zones.

U.S. radio broadcasts

"There is another way for the bloodshed to stop: And that is, for the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside and then comply with the United Nations' resolutions and rejoin the family of peace-loving nations."

"Rise to save the homeland from the clutches of dictatorship so that you can devote yourself to avoid the dangers of the continuation of the war and destruction. Honourable sons of the Tigris and Euphrates [rivers], at these decisive moments of your life, and while facing the danger of death at the hands of foreign forces, you have no option in order to survive and defend the homeland but put an end to the dictator and his criminal gang."[2]

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Al-Ali's radio broadcast encouraged Iraqis to "stage a revolution" and claimed that "[Saddam] will flee the battlefield when he becomes certain that the catastrophe has engulfed every street, every house and every family in Iraq."[3]

The uprisings

The turmoil began in Basra on March 1, 1991, one day after the Gulf War ceasefire, when a T-72 tank gunner returning home after Iraq's defeat in Kuwait fired a shell into a portrait of Saddam and the other soldiers applauded.[4] In Najaf, a demonstration near the city's great Imam Ali Mosque became a gun battle between Shia deserters and Saddam's security forces; the rebels seized the shrine as Ba'ath members fled the city or were killed. The uprising spread within days to all of the largest Shia cities of southern Iraq: Karbala, Hilla, Nasiriyah, Amarah, Samawa, Kut, and Diwaniya; smaller cities were also swept up in the revolt. There was also unrest in the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City (then-called Saddam City), in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. On the day that each city rebelled, masses of unarmed civilians and small contingents of rebels converged in the streets. They descended on government buildings shouting anti-regime and pro-Iranian slogans before staging an attack. Government forces fought back, but were either killed, captured or allowed to flee. Once in control, the rebels flung open the regime's prisons and interrogation centers and seized small caches of weapons.

The rebellion in the North (Iraqi Kurdistan) erupted on March 4, in the town of Rania, northwest of Sulaymaniyah. Within 10 days the rebels controlled every city in the North, except Kirkuk and Mosul. However, on March 20 the Kurdish rebels captured Kirkuk. In Sulaymaniyah, Kurdish rebels captured the regional headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service; inside, they found torture devices smeared with blood; in retaliation, the rebels brutally killed the captured secret policemen. Ordinary government soldiers were however spared in an amnesty and were issued safe-conduct passes to traverse Kurdish-held territory on their way home. In Arbil, the rebels also captured and handed over the government documents related to the genocidalOperation Anfal to western human rights organizations.

The March 1991 uprising gathered momentum as many of the government's regular troops and militiamen switched sides to the rebels. The army contained substantial anti-government elements; Shia Arabs accounted for 80% of the fighting ranks but only 20% of the officers. In the North, the defection of the government-recruited Kurdish Jash militia gave considerable force to the revolt.

Suppression of the uprisings

With little more than small arms, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and some captured tanks and artillery pieces, the rebels had few surface-to-air missiles, which made them almost defenseless against Iraqi helicopter gunships and indiscriminate artillery barrages. The central government responded to the uprisings with crushing force. According to Human Rights Watch:

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In their attempts to retake cities, and after consolidating control, loyalist forces killed thousands of anyone who opposes them whether a rebel or a civilian by firing indiscriminately into the opposing areas; executing them on the streets, in homes and in hospitals; rounding up suspects, especially young men, during house-to-house searches, and arresting them with or without charge or shooting them en masse; and using helicopters to attack those who try to flee the cities.[5]

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The Kurdish uprising collapsed even more quickly than it had begun. After ousting the peshmerga (Kurdish fighters) from Kirkuk on March 29, the Iraqi army rolled into Dahuk and Irbil on March 30, Zakho on April 1, and Sulaymaniyah, the last important town held by the rebels, over the next two days. The Kurds were pushed back to Kore, a small valley were a last stand was held. After the successful defense, Saddam ordered to halt his troops south of the valley. This battle is very famous within Kurdish lore and still inspires people to this day.

In the South, the government quelled all but scattered resistance by the end of March. On April 5, Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council announced "the complete crushing of acts of sedition, sabotage, and rioting in all towns of Iraq."

The death toll was high throughout the country. The rebels had killed Baathist officials in many southern cities. In response, thousands of unarmed civilians were killed by indiscriminate fire from loyalist tanks, artillery and helicopters. Later, when security forces rolled into the cities, they detained and summarily executed people at random using the policy of collective responsibility.

Aftermath

Exodus from cities

In March and early April, nearly two million Iraqis, 1.5 million of them Kurds,[8] escaped from strife-torn cities to the mountains along the northern borders, into the southern marshes, and into Turkey and Iran. Their exodus was sudden and chaotic, with thousands of desperate refugees fleeing on foot, on donkeys or crammed onto open-backed trucks and tractors. Some were killed by army helicopters, which deliberately strafed columns of fleeing civilians in a number of incidents in both the North and South. Others were injured when they stepped on land mines planted by Iraqi troops near the eastern border during the war with Iran.

Beginning in March until July of 1991 the U.S. and some of the Gulf War allies defended the Kurdish refugees from air attacks (shooting down two Iraqi Su-17 aircraft) and provided humanitarian assistance to them during Operation Provide Comfort. In April, in Yasilova incident, British and Turkish forces confronted each other over the treatment of refugees in Turkey.

Destruction of the Iraqi marshlands

In southeastern Iraq, thousands of Shia civilians, army deserters, and rebels began seeking precarious shelter in remote areas of the marshes straddling the Iranian border. After the uprising, the Marsh Arabs were singled out for mass reprisals, accompanied by ecologically catastrophic drainage of the Iraqi marshlands and the large-scale and systematic forcible transfer of the local population.

Kurdish-Arab civil war in Iraq

Area controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga after October 1991

Fighting continued until October when an agreement was made for Iraqi withdrawl from parts of Iraq's Kurdish inhabited regeon. This led to the establishment of the Kurdistan Regional Government and creation of a Kurdish Autonomous Republic in Northern Iraq. A long positional war followed, and an estimated 100,000-150,000 Iraqi soldiers remained along the front, backed by tanks and heavy artillery and the Iraqi government established a blockade of food, fuel and other goods going to the new autonomous republic. The US responded by creating a No-fly zone over Northern Iraq The general stalemate was broken during the 1994-1997 Iraqi Kurdish Civil War, when due to the PUK alliance with Iran, the KDP called in Iraqi support and Saddam sent his military into Kurdistan capturing Arbil and as-Sulaymaniyah, his forces however retreated due to the US intervening by launching air raids on Iraq. Kurds further expanded their area of control after participating in the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, which led to the recognition of Kurdish autonomy by the new Iraqi government.

Mass graves

Many of the people killed were buried in mass graves. Several mass graves containing thousands of bodies have been uncovered since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, notably in the Shia Arab south and Kurdish north.[9] Of the 200 mass graves the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry had registered in the three years since the American-led invasion, the majority were in the South, including one located south of Baghdad that is believed to hold as many as 10,000 to 15,000 victims.[10]

War crimes trial

The trial of 15 former aides to Saddam Hussein, including Ali Hassan al-Majid, over their alleged role in the suppression of a Shia uprising and the deaths of 60,000 to 100,000 people, took place in Baghdad in August 2007.[11] Al-Majid had been already sentenced to death in June 2007 for genocide against the Kurds.

U.S. non-intervention controversy

The Iraqi survivors and American critics of President George H. W. Bush say the president encouraged the rebellion after halting UN coalition forces at Iraq's southern border with Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War.[10] Soon after the uprising began, however, fears of a disintegrating Iraq led the Bush Administration to distance itself from the insurgents.

Officials downplayed the significance of the revolts and spelled out a policy of non-intervention in Iraq's internal affairs. On March 5, Rear Admiral John Michael McConnell, director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged "chaotic and spontaneous" uprisings were under way in 13 Iraqi cities, but stated the Pentagon's view that Saddam would prevail because of the rebels' "lack of organization and leadership." On the same day, Secretary of DefenseDick Cheney said "it would be very difficult for us to hold the coalition together for any particular course of action dealing with internal Iraqi politics, and I don't think, at this point, our writ extends to trying to move inside Iraq."[12]

U.S. Major General Martin Brandtner, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added "there is no move on the [part of] U.S. forces...to let any weapons slip through [to the rebels], or to play any role whatsoever in fomenting or assisting any side."[13]U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher explained the next day on March 6: "We don't think that outside powers should be interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq."[14] Consequently, U.S. occupation forces in Iraq stationed a few miles from Nasiriyah, Samawa, and Basra did nothing to help the anti-Saddam rebels.

The Administration sternly warned Iraqi authorities on March 7 against the use of chemical weapons during the unrest, but equivocated Iraq's use of helicopter gunships. The question of helicopters was also ignored in the ceasefire agreement of March 3, which prohibited Iraqi use of fixed-wing aircraft over the country. Some say that the use of helicopters, employed by loyalist forces with impunity to attack rebels and civilians alike, proved to be instrumental in quelling the insurrection. Some others say the ban on helicopters would only prolong the uprisings, but would not change their ultimate outcome.

On April 2, in a carefully crafted statement, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said that the Bush Administration had "never, ever stated as either a military or a political goal...the removal of Saddam Hussein."[15] President Bush himself insisted three days later, just as the Iraqi loyalist forces were putting down the last resistance in the cities:

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"I have not misled anybody about the intentions of the United States of America. I don't think the Shias in the south, those who are unhappy with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad or the Kurds in the north, ever felt that the United States would come to their assistance to overthrow this man. (...) I made clear from the very beginning that it was not an objective of the coalition or the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein."[16]